The Mighty Winchesters
by ImpalaLove
Summary: A collection of Supernatural oneshots that will mostly revolve around the brothers. Open to suggestions for stories! Any possible spoilers/warnings will be listed at the beginning of each new addition.
1. Brother brother brother

**Hey! So to celebrate my 50th story on this site, I'm thinking of making this one a kind of random collection of little oneshots. Right now I have several sitting around that I'd like to get posted, but I'll definitely be open to suggestions if you guys have any ideas/preferences for fics. For now, here's the first story (no spoilers for this one):**

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**Brother Brother Brother**

Eyes squinted, forehead pulled down like he's always waiting for bad news.

It's more than wrinkles that crawl above his brilliant eyes now. It's a permanent indentation, a testament to all the bad news he's already been subjected to in this life.

But even still, he finds reasons to smile. He embraces the sun that glances off his worn features, grows still when the wind calls his name, making sure he captures every word, memorizes every instruction. He glides over broken glass, won't let the shards dig too deep into his heels, moving too fast to think about the pain. The blood takes a long time to dry, pushing into the fibers of haunted vanilla carpets and the rusty nails of abandoned staircases he finds his way to next. But the story's not over and the pages, though ragged, have not yet run out, their words still spilling onto the ground and pulling apart the fabric of the spaces of the places they loved. He swipes calloused hands over the smattered canvas of this brutal life, sifting through puzzle pieces until he finds the ones enveloped in golden laughter and firm embraces and brother brother brother.

There's a light to these fragments, and he picks them out from the shadows, arranges them in a halo above his own head, though he knows he's no angel. It's just a way to keep the pieces close, just so he can find them when the rest of his mind is shrouded in the darkness he'll never fully escape. It is a constant companion, and he has learned to carry its weight, shoulders strengthened from the load as the years have flown by with little more than a passing glance. Looking back now though, he can see the marks they've left. The story of those years is carved into his skin, wrinkles and scars and callouses that pull at the edges of his eyes, wrap around his bruised torso, press firmly against his fingertips. He holds the sky in those fingertips, fills in the spaces between the clouds with his own mural, a map that leads to reconstructed walls and open arms and brother brother brother.

He'll never cease to move, even when bones turn brittle and hair turns gray. Mostly because he knows he won't last that long. His life is a series of burning stars that disappear with the sun's renewal and have actually been snuffed out a long time ago, now just waiting for the rest of the world to realize that time is up. It just means he has to move a little faster than most, which he does already. It comes with the territory, with the tracking and following and destroying of the evil that won't rest. Sleep is a luxury and a curse, a smattering of nightmare and memory and light and, if he's lucky, brother brother brother.

He doesn't know how much longer the strings of this mission will pull him along, but he hopes for an end in one form or another. When he walks, he scrapes his fingers along the walls of every corridor, drags his feet through the dirt of every graveyard. This is his gift to the world, the evidence of his passing through, and his weary steps leave behind a faint trail of where he's been, all that he has seen. He leaves people behind too; strangers, lovers, friends, family. It is the harsh reality of this life, and he knows the hollow pit of loss better than most. It has burrowed permanently into the center of his stomach, its shadow curling lazily around the glowing heart that rests just out of reach, still pumping scarlet and alive. But he does not wander these roads alone. His fate is sealed with the one who sits beside him, the one who strangles darkness in his fiery fists and calls him brother brother brother.

The world is sinking and this life is ending with the swift cut of a blade and the sharp gasp of what shouldn't be surprise. He knows the way the light fades, has felt the soft, slippery pelt of unconsciousness as she pulls him towards the end, but he has to find something before he lets himself go. It's there, in the back of his layered mind, trying to push through the glowing sparks that flood his vision and seem to circle out from the center of the world. He can still feel the rain on his face and he can still understand the words that fall from trembling lips but nothing else matters except the one who holds him here for just a few more moments. He knows when the halo of light he's erected around himself shatters completely, can understand what all these dancing shadows mean but he won't take the time to count them because the breath that's left is used to utter that one word for this one last time.

Brother brother brother.

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**Thanks for reading! Also, in terms of suggestions for future stories, I'm open to pretty much anything besides slash or Destiel stuff- it's just not really my style. And a special thank you to all of you who have read and reviewed over the course of my little fanfiction journey haha I really really appreciate it! **


	2. Lighthouse

**No spoilers for this one. It's another "choose your own brother" deal; I kind of became obsessed with those and have a couple more lying around that I'll also post on here at some point. Anyways, enjoy!**

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**Lighthouse**

There's this painting I know. This painting that seems like it shouldn't matter so much, except that it does. I saw it for the first time when I was eight years old, propped up on one of the walls in a small community arts center. We were on a school field trip, one of the few I got to go on because we moved around so much. Before this field trip, I really didn't care all that much about art. I still don't, actually. It's just this one. This one painting I could never get out of my head.

I saw it again six years later, a photocopy of this same painting plastered on the wall of a classroom, shining and laminated and peeling off at the corners. First day at another new school and there it was, glistening like a goddamn beacon or something. Like it had been waiting for me.

I don't even know what it is about this picture. There's no deeper meaning really, it's just a landscape. Just this picture of a huge, roiling sea, waves crashing over rocks and spilling onto beaches, foaming white. There's a few generic seagulls flying overhead, wings spread wide as they ride with the wind. But there's just something about it. Like...if you saw this painting, you would probably say that it's alive. I don't know. I mean there's something about those waves that just seem unstoppable. Unrelenting. If you really look at it, you can watch them move. You can see these thick plumes of blue crash over and over again onto this eroding rock, this sharp patchwork of stone that lines an empty beach.

But then, if you look even closer, you see this lighthouse. There's this tiny little lighthouse that sits up on one of those dying rocks with the waves crashing over it. And it just looks so old and worn. The details of this lighthouse are there if you look close enough. The peeling paint, the cracked wood, the rusted railing that wraps all the way around. And if you really lean in, if you literally push your face right up to this tiny little lighthouse that sits on this peeling rock that fights against this enormous ocean, you can see it. This crumbling, dying, poor excuse for a lighthouse isn't completely snuffed out. There's still a tiny flicker of light coming from the top of that tower. Just this tiny little dot of yellow dabbed onto the canvas. For all I know it could've been an accident; a slip of the artist's hand. But that little fleck just gets me for some reason. It just seems like the only part of that whole painting that means anything at all.

I see this painting again. Now. I picture it in my head, pull it out of so many lost memories as I stand in the middle of the ruins of this battlefield. I pull apart the details in my mind- that failing structure, that rumbling tide that won't stop slapping the shore. I think about all the hits we've taken, all the waves we've had to defeat, even as we prepared for the next one. I wonder how many more it'll take before I fall, before my pieces shatter into dust, swept away on the next breeze.

I wonder if my brother sees the same hopeless cycle that I do. I wonder if he too watches his world fall apart over and over and wonders why he even bothers to repair it. After so many years and so much tragedy, I wonder if he still loves the ocean.

I wonder if his light still shines.

And I realize that it does.

I realize that the only reason I'm still standing here is because my brother has not yet given up. He still holds his crumbling walls together somehow; has found a way to push back against these incessant swells that stream through the cracks, flood the floorboards of his bruised heart.

I think he is an idiot for trying so hard to hold onto something that just keeps slipping from his fingers. I think if he were anything but stupid, he would've stopped fighting so damn hard against all of the things that are so obviously beyond his control. I think he is the strongest person I know. I think he is a tattered soul, a shattered shell of blood that somehow still manages to keep his head above the cresting waves that pull apart the sand he stands on. I think he will lose eventually.

And I think I will be right there beside him when that day comes.

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**I'm still taking requests for story ideas and I will try my hardest to get to them after I've finished writing out my longer fic. Once again, I appreciate your comments and thank you for reading! And a side-note to mb64: I have not forgotten your request for something happy! I will find that inspiration =)  
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	3. Silverware

**This is a story about Dean Winchester and this is a story about a tragic hero and those two things are exactly the same. Enjoy =)**

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Silverware

There's that saying about a silver spoon. You know the one. Those who are born with a silver spoon in their mouth are the lucky ones, the ones with all the money and all the power. They are privileged; safe within the walls built around them, the walls built of thin green paper and heavy coins.

But rarely do you hear the story of the boy who was instead born with a silver knife in hand. This tale goes untold, perhaps because it is a rarity, and perhaps because it is almost too tragic to bear.

Because this is the boy who never gets a taste of the silver he clings to. He knows that silver is a weapon used for killing, not a utensil for sitting around the table crowed with food and family. He hasn't known a table like that since he was four years old, and even then, it was never real silver. He thinks about those faded memories from time to time. When the stars close their eyes and won't blink at him and he can't find his way back in from the cold; that is when he longs for the warm remnants of comfort that won't come. That kind of life hasn't folded its arms around him since the world was new for him and the skies were always bright. He didn't even need the stars back then, because back then, the sun never set.

But now he walks in darkness, haunted by the things he has seen and the secrets he must keep. He trudges through a swirling sea of blood that threatens to pull him under completely, sloshes along the soft leather of his boots and seeps into every crevice of his eroding mind. These are the memories he doesn't want and the screams he'll never drown out, and this is the price of knowing too much, too young.

So you see, his silver is always stained and his heart is always heavy, hefting a burden fit for a thousand weary souls who have never tasted the freedom of an open road. He travels such roads often, but it is not without purpose and it is not without consequence. Sometimes these roads feel like home. Sometimes they feel limitless, but this is not the kind of eternity he craves. Because his stomach is sick and all he tastes is the thick red of iron and the slow burn of whiskey that doubles as both sterilizer and painkiller, stitching skin under the glow of a cheap motel lamp as purpling bruises stand out against heavy shadows.

After all he has seen, all he has known, you would think this boy to be unhinged. Maniacal maybe. It seems he is so close to the life he longs for, can feel the slip of cool metal between his fingers as he wields his weapons. Yet still, he is so impossibly far from all that he desires, can never dull the edges of his knives enough to even start to resemble a spoon.

Maybe he _is_ a little crazy then, because he tries anyway. Whittles away at the weapons in his bloodied hands and thinks that maybe if he uses them enough, they'll become something new, something softer and rounder, something that doesn't slice through skin quite so quick anymore.

He tells himself all this, almost partway convinced. But then he sharpens his knives again. It's unavoidable habit, a lesson drilled into his skull and another thing he wishes he could forget.

But blood is red and blood is blue and this boy is a warrior, that much will always be true.

So his weapons are lethal and his eyes are dry and he moves forward, does the job that has been forged into the fabric of his very bones from the time he was small. Maybe he is a little desperate, but he is also a hero, spreading brilliant light along the edges of his fingertips and out through the ends of his hair as he runs toward a death that cannot yet keep its grasp on him. He moves too quickly and he strikes too soon, pulls people away from the monsters that haunt them, even as his own nightmares converge and destroy.

It is a wonder he still stands on two feet, somehow always quick enough to avoid the collapsing walls and black smoke that wage wars inside his head. This boy is tragedy, but he will not let you mourn him. He fights the good fight and he fights it for the one he loves the most and he fights it for those he doesn't know at all. He is a soldier and an unfortunate son, built from the very fires that consume. One day he too will be consumed.

And still, the only way this boy will ever feel the cool sting of silver pass his lips is if he is eating a bullet.

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**Thanks for reading! I'm always up for taking requests, so shoot me a message if you feel so inclined. Otherwise, have a wonderful day. **


	4. Fill in the Gaps

**What a surprise, another story about Dean flippin' Winchester. No spoilers/not set in a particular season (but focused more towards the beginning of the series). This one's been sitting around for a while on my computer so I figured I'd post it. Hope you enjoy!**

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**Fill in the Gaps**

He used to think flexible was the right word for what he was. Always bending moving twisting turning making sure to stay out of everyone else's way. There was no time for arguing, so he didn't. There was no room for error, so he did his best not to make any. Every question needed prompt answer, every dilemma a quick solution. It was either that, or somebody ended up dead. So Dean became...flexible.

There was Dad, a man who seemed to generate his own energy, imposing force that he was. There was Sam, whose fury could rival that of a tornado whenever life got too real or too bloody, slamming ceaselessly against the confined spaces of each run-down motel they had hunkered down in for the night. And then there was Dean, the one who slid into the empty spaces that were left, molding himself perfectly to fill in all the cracks, shaping and reshaping himself until the walls stopped echoing with angry rebuttals and the room fell back into silent, if not grudging, routine.

There was an art to this doing and undoing, this carefully choreographed shifting that Dean Winchester had mastered by the time he hit double digits. This was a complicated balance of push and pull, father and brother, family and duty, and Dean learned it by heart, practiced in front of the mirror and made sure the steps stuck in his brain, subtle but perfectly timed. He knew what to look for, could spot the signs of discontent before Dad or Sam even realized an argument was brewing between them. The same one over and over. Dean realized after a while that his own voice just got lost in the noise, so he stopped screaming so loud. He started to listen instead. He was the shoulder his brother could lean on and the open ears his father could vent to and the mediator that would sometimes have to force them both apart. Dean was security detail and bouncer, a role he filled reluctantly because he could feel the holes it left behind, the spaces he had to vacate to make room for this new job.

And then there was _the_ job. Dean was good at that one, actually enjoyed it for the most part, as long as no one was bleeding by the end of it. He was 'soldier' and 'hunter' and sometimes even 'hero', pulling monsters from beneath the beds of those who never knew to defend themselves in the first place. This was a role Dean wanted desperately to fill, but sometimes he just wasn't quick enough. Sometimes he couldn't hold his shape, couldn't focus on strangers when Sam or Dad screamed his name and blood spilled from their lips. 'Son' and 'brother' were always his most important names.

After hunts like these, Dean became 'doctor' and 'caretaker' and 'help me please'. He dabbed methodically at red ooze and learned to act first and panic later because head wounds bleed a lot and he's still breathing, still breathing. Other times the blood spilled from his own mouth and he became 'patient' and 'hold still' and 'take the damn pills'. This was usually about the time the arguing started up again, when Dean's vision swam and his limbs ached and he couldn't open his eyes long enough to slide back into place between Dad and Sam and the nasty swells that rippled between them.

He didn't mind being the glue. It was in his nature to even out the scales, to 'insert lame joke here' and 'make inappropriate comment there,' just so their family didn't add enough fracture to an already collapsing frame. Dean Winchester pushed hard against that frame, got weighed down by time and absence and reemergence and tragedy. He shaped and reshaped, tried to be the support beams and the roof, the needle and the thread all at once. He lashed out against gravity, screamed a big 'fuck you' to the natural decay that came with flood after flood, water cresting over half-constructed dams he'd never had time to finish.

Dean folded and flipped, rolled and curled and straightened until his edges were worn and the tips of his fingers had eroded into nothing, leaving rough, uneven callouses and a breaking heart. He did this for a long time, became the things everyone else needed him to be until one day, he forgot how to bounce back. He lost his original shape. So he just kept bending and twisting and arcing, just kept sewing himself into the fabric of everybody else's needs so that he wouldn't disappear completely.

This path meant destruction and this road would eventually end in dust, but as long as Dean was still 'brother,' as long as Sam was still there, still breathing in the seat or the bed next to him, he figured he could handle oblivion just fine.

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**Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts if you have a minute!**


	5. Strangers

**Hi Guys! I haven't added to my 'Mighty Winchesters' collection in a while, so I figured I might as well. As per usual, I've left several stories just sitting around for quite some time now. Oops. **

**This one is set in season 6 sometime before episode 6 so vague spoilers I guess? (It's before Dean realizes exactly what's wrong with his brother though). Dean's POV. **

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Strangers

I think I know his name, but I've forgotten how to pronounce all the syllables. I think I know his face, but the way he walks makes me wonder if he's really here. I think I want him to still be the little kid I remember, the one who used to bring me earthworms and smile like he was giving me the sun instead. To me, it felt like he was. It was the only way to explain the warmth that filled me every time I saw that dimpled smile of his. So much life. So much light.

He's watching me now, a long, calculated stare, and there's something behind it I've never seen in him before; a cold aftertaste of something dark and almost as terrifying the Hell he's been through, the Hell I left him to face alone. At first, I thought that's what this was. No one comes back from something like that in one piece. But now I think it's something else, something worse. He's just…not the same.

I've looked out for him my entire life, been so scared of having something take him away from me and not being able to stop it (_because it's happened before, it's happened so many times before_).

But now _he's_ the one who scares me.

The way he's looking at me now.

I don't dare stare back, because he thinks I'm asleep, but I can sense his eyes on me. They burn into the back of my skull with an intensity reserved for the things we hunt. And for the first time in my life, I feel like _I_ am the hunted.

I try to keep my breathing even, afraid that any hitch will alert him to the fact that I'm conscious. I've faked sleep countless times before, pretending exhaustion had claimed me after a particularly brutal hunt so that my little brother could finally lay his own head down. There are many times he won't sleep until I do. But tonight, he doesn't. He hasn't moved in a long time, hasn't so much as ruffled the sheets of his own bed in the hours since we'd turned out the light, but I still know him better than he thinks, and I can _feel_ him. Awake. Staring.

I slide my hand a few inches to the right. Just until I can feel the knife beneath my pillow.

I wish it didn't make me feel better.

The quiet is eerie and hollow and it beats against my eardrums like a heartbeat, like a telegraph sending out a warning.

I'm a little rusty on my Morse Code, so I'm not sure what the message is, but I'm sure it's nothing good. It can't be anything good.

He sighs then, long and deep, like it's the first exhale he's taken in a long time.

I tense.

He moves slowly, so quietly that if I wasn't listening for it, I probably wouldn't hear the soft padding of each step he takes toward me. The instinct is to freeze, but I force myself to shift slightly, letting a small sigh escape my lips and twisting my neck until I'm facing my little brother. He stops. I see him through half-cracked eyelids. We are both frozen for this one, immeasurable moment; a kind of limbo that makes me feel almost completely detached, as if I'm watching this scene unfold from the screen of a television. Because there's no way this can be real. My little brother can't be standing here in front of me in the dark, fists curled and neck locked, glaring down at me with hollow, contemplative eyes. Like he's measuring pros and cons. Like he's analyzing whether or not I'm worth having around. Keeping around.

And then the moment ends and he takes one step back, then another. He backs up until his calves hit the side of his bed, and then he lowers himself stiffly onto it, spine straight and eyes still locked on my face now that I've turned towards him. I'm still trying to keep my breathing steady, but I have a feeling he knows I'm awake.

When the sun rises, we don't talk about it. I had drifted between awake and asleep for the remainder of the night, but there was no way I would let unconsciousness truly claim me. Now I open my eyes and blink against the sun already streaming in through open blinds. Sam is sitting at the table near the door, laptop open, staring intently at the screen. He shoots a quick glance in my direction and nods, immediately turning back to the screen.

"Morning." I force the word out, along with the accompanying smile, but my stomach spins and bile clings to the back of my throat. I push myself back so that I can sit against the headboard, fingers curled into the sheets on either side of me so I don't reach for the knife again.

"Want me to grab breakfast?" I ask. Sam looks up and smiles but there's something different about the way it touches his lips, like he has to think about it before he moves the right muscles into position.

"I can grab something," he replies, immediately slapping his computer closed and reaching for the jacket that hangs off the back of his chair. He's out the door almost before I can register it.

And I'm left sitting on my bed, hands cramping from squeezing the sheets so tightly.

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**Thanks for reading! As always, feel free to leave your thoughts- you're all wonderful.**

**Also, if you have any suggestions for story ideas, feel free to shoot them my way! **


	6. Stages

**This one is a longer one-shot than usual but I figured I'd still throw it into this little collection. Set in Season 8 sometime after 8x21 The Great Escapist SO SPOILERS. (As a refresher: this is the episode we first meet Metatron and after Charlie's Djinn video game dream). Dean's POV.**

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Stages

I am nowhere.

The world still turns around me, but I don't have to feel it if I don't want to. Things are quiet, though not in the eerie way. It's more of a humming buzz in the background and nothing else, a slim echo of sound that is just enough to offset total silence. Total silence will drive you nuts. It's true. I once read about this sound-proof room you can sit in, but after just a little while you start hallucinating all kinds of crazy, and apparently the longest a person has ever lasted in there was forty-five minutes. That's not the kind of quiet I want, so it's not the kind I've created here. There's still that hum.

"Do you wanna be alone?" Sam's voice drifts through this thin barrier of mine, the one I'd been working on constructing since I was four years old. I had originally meant to create an unbreachable wall of stone, but things hadn't panned out that way, and now that I know about that soundproof room, maybe it would've been a bad idea anyway. Still, after Mom, all I wanted was quiet, so I began erecting the framework of something that would eventually allow for total isolation. But the first time I heard Sammy cry out in the night, the first night after Mom and the fire that took her, I replaced stone with fiberglass so that I could always find my way back to him. So it is a flimsy, fragile structure, but every now and again I still pull it into the forefront of my mind, just as a way to keep a tiny bit of quiet captured within it for a bit longer. This silence is like being underwater. Like half-drowning in a bathtub. There's that bloody world all around me, but the water floods in and I can find a small sliver of calm to bury myself in.

"Dean?"

I watch the barrier shatter before my eyes, just as it always does when I hear that voice. I bring my hands up to catch some of the stray pieces. Others cling to my eyelashes. Blinking back to where I am, I find my brother's eyes watching me, the brows above them inching higher and higher the longer I stay silent. But how do I respond to a question like that?

"_Do you want to be alone?"_

I have a question for _you_ Sammy: Isn't that what I've been afraid of my entire life? Isn't that the one thing I would _never_ want?

Don't answer that.

Anyway, I know that's not what Sam's asking right now. Wrong context, wrong state of mind. I try to formulate a response that makes sense, though nothing really ever does when it comes to our lives, that much I've figured out by now. I settle on a small shake of my head, quite miniscule but still noticeable to Sam, who takes that as his invitation to sit down across from me, two beers in one hand. He slides one over to my end of the table, takes a swig of the other, eyes only leaving me for the small amount of time necessary to knock the bottle back.

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My little brother really is _big_. Of course I know this already. I am with him every day, have known his ins and outs since we were kids, but every once in a while I like to look at him through a stranger's eyes, just so I can really see him in all his overgrown glory. He's got those wide, brown eyes and that thick, floppy hair falling all over his face, and despite the pushed-back shoulders and the grim line of his lips that I wish was a smile, he still looks for all the world like a puppy who has never understood his size or his influence. Especially the influence he has on me.

"You wanna talk about it?"

Those brown eyes searching, looking, waiting patiently for big brother to shape up and start acting like big brother again. His faith can be exhausting.

A more pronounced shake of my head this time, to which Sam smiles, dimples popping out like they always do, no matter if the smile is genuine or not. This one is, I think. Sad, but genuine. I used to be able to know for sure.

"Look Dean, you can't shut down on me, okay?" Sam says, his smile fading to something more serious, the worried expression he wears far too often. "I need you here with me, now more than ever."

It's the eyes. Those big, stupid puppy-eyes. I swear, the kid could convince everyone that Satan is the Messiah with a face like that, and he knows exactly what he's doing when he uses it. Witnesses, victims, me. He knows. This time though, I can't give him what he wants. I still can't seem to open my mouth, not even to take a sip of the unopened beer he has set in front of me. I'd need something much stronger anyway. Those inquisitive brows of his are crinkled now, knotted all around up there on his gigantor forehead. He really looks worried and I should probably say something, but separating my teeth seems like too much effort. They are clenched together just inside my lips, grinding into each other as I sit here at this table in this tiny motel room with my little brother across from me, sipping his beer determinedly. I know this next stage now, the one he's just transitioned to. It's called the "two can play that game" scheme, and I watch those big eyes narrow a bit as he takes another sip of his beer. He regards me knowingly, raises those stupidly expressive eyebrows of his as I stare at him and try to figure out how my tongue has become lodged so permanently inside my unyielding mouth.

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It's not that I mean to drive him crazy. It's just that I have nothing to say. And even if I did, my body isn't responding. I truly have shut down; the one thing Sam has asked me not to do. Well, the one thing besides picking up any more waitresses from Tampa, but I sincerely doubt that's on his mind right now. Not even sure why it's on mine. Maybe to avert my thoughts from the more pressing issues at hand, the solutions to which are not hidden inside my unspeaking mouth. Maybe that's why I haven't spoken. Maybe I have nothing left to offer anymore.

Oh well.

My usefulness in my little brother's life has lasted longer than I ever thought it would.

"Please? Dean. Please?"

Next stage.

He sounds like he's six again and he's just found out our motel TV doesn't work on the day I'd promised him a cartoon marathon while Dad was away. John Winchester almost ripped apart the whole place once he realized we weren't in the same room he left us in. Silly, inadequate me forgot to warn him or the poor, frail woman at the front desk that after he left on his hunt, I'd opted for a room with a working TV for Sammy's benefit. First and last time for everything.

Other things, you have to experience over and over again. Like this pleading look in Sammy's eyes. I open my mouth. Close it again. I grab onto the cold neck of my beer bottle and pull it closer to me, sliding it along the table until it is sitting just beneath my chin. Maybe I can start with a drink and go from there. Maybe I can start with a sip of this cold beer and then I can open my mouth and tell my brother what he needs to hear. It will sound something like: _"It's okay, I'm fine,"_ and it will stick in my teeth and slide along my gums but I will say it again until he believes it.

I do not have to believe it.

It takes three tries to open the beer. My hands keep slipping along the label, condensation dripping down the sides as I struggle to get a proper grip- one hand on the bottle, one on the twist-off cap. It digs into my fingers and it hurts more than it should, but I finally wrench it off. And I still can't drink from it. My mouth has stayed stubbornly closed, lips pressing into one another as if they have been glued together by the clumsy hands of a first-grader as he sticks macaroni onto a family-filled picture frame.

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Maybe I've been hexed.

I mean, we're not hunting a witch at the moment, but that would at least explain this ridiculous inability to explain myself, to break this stupid silence of mine. A hex is much better than admitting to what a child I'm being, worse than the one responsible for gluing my lips shut. So maybe that's it. I've always hated witches, with their bloodlust and their sacrifices and their all around lunacy. No thanks Bette, don't need any hocus pocus from you please and thanks. I should have Sam start looking for a hex bag before I die. I should find a pad of paper to write it down with. I should write down a lot of things, just in case Sam doesn't know them already.

"You're starting to freak me out, man. Please just talk to me."

He does sound a little freaked out. Definitely not full-blown little brother panic mode, but he's building up to it. I really should say something before…

Oh.

There it is.

Next stage.

We've switched to anger, the phase where I can barely see those eyebrows anymore because they're scrunched too far down by his eyes. He's scowling at me like I'm a dog that won't sit, stay, roll over. Those I could do, it's just the 'speak' command I'm having issues with at the moment. I run a hand over my silent mouth, feeling my eyes fall to the table, then flicker back up to look at my brother. I think I've got the same expressive eyebrows as him now, all squashed and crumpled into something that looks like a mix of pleading and sorrowful. Sammy's expression doesn't soften. Sammy's past the reassurance stage. Once he gets to anger, it's hard to rein him in. Unless I could open my goddamn mouth. But I can't.

"Fine. Whatever, Dean. You don't wanna talk? Fine. You call me when you do, how about that? Because I'm not sticking around if this is how you're gonna be. You're not the only one who feels this, you know that? It's not just you who loses."

Sam coughs twice, grabs his coat, and leaves. Always leaves. I flinch when the door slams shut, and it feels like the first time I have shifted since I sat down. No wonder Sam is angry. That little fiberglass barrier inside my head doesn't do much good if I myself have turned to stone. Maybe that's it. Maybe we ran into Medusa when I wasn't paying attention, and now I've literally been turned to stone. Or maybe Sam asked for King Midas's touch. I certainly feel heavy enough to have been turned into gold. Plus, it'd be nice if things were Sammy's fault for a change. But they're not. I know they're not, so Sam's free of the burden that comes with blame. I'm also not even sure if he's touched me since it happened. There had to have been a reassuring pat on the shoulder or a strong hand on my chin as he tilted my head up, looked for hidden injury beneath the thick paste of another person's blood. On my hands, in my hair, seeping into the rundown fabric of the jacket that is now folded into a messy pile next to the door of this motel room, hardening into one large stain of used-to-be red. I can smell the iron from here. Or maybe the smell is coming from the blood that is still clogged beneath my fingernails, hardening into more stone, even after all that scrubbing.

* * *

Outside, a car horn blares. Brakes squeal on asphalt, but there is no collision I can hear.

My wall is gone now. It's not just the silent humming anymore; it's everything. The sounds are all flooding back in and I don't think I'm ready for them, but they come anyway. Some of them are here and now, but I can also hear the screaming from earlier, the sounds of the woman as she fell, as she gasped for air in my arms, as she told me she wasn't ready, wasn't ready. And then her breath turned to panting turned to wheezing turned to nothing as I sat with her, as I watched her body deflate from woman to shell to nothing. Nothing but a bloody memory I will always carry, always knowing I was too late. Nothing I could do but watch her die quiet.

No matter what they tell you, death is quiet. Whether it is a soldier plucked from the horrors of battle or an asthmatic left in the dark with no inhaler, those last moments are soundless and insignificant. No wonder I've gone crazy then. Too much silence in my life.

Outside, an engine rumbles. It sounds like my car, but there is no way it could be.

It is.

* * *

Sam carries two bags: one plastic and one brown paper, the key to the motel dangling between two fingers with the Impala's keys between his teeth as he reaches back to close the door and sets the bags down in front of me. He huffs one of those big exhales of his, through his nose and not his mouth. It sounds like a last breath; it sounds like _her_ last breath, and I flinch away from it, pushing back from the table and onto my feet. It's my turn to leave. Now that my peaceful little wall is down and my brother is back, I need a long ride with music blaring and nothing else.

But Sam has other ideas. Sam is in front of the door and he's not moving. He's not mad anymore though, which makes me wonder which stage he's moved to now. Usually I can tell by the eyebrows, but they are currently balancing nicely on his forehead, giving nothing away.

"Eat," Sam commands, gesturing to the plastic bag on the table with an incline of his head. Now that I am standing, sitting back down would mean defeat. So I just stand there, looking up at my little brother like the absolute idiot that I am, all silence and no fight left in me other than this pitiful attempt at a nonverbal "No."

Sam isn't having it. He grabs my shoulders and steers me back into the chair I have just vacated, pushing until I comply. But there is a softness behind the touch, no matter how forceful it may seem. He pushes only with the base of his palms, his fingers squeezing gently as my knees hit the plastic chair behind me and fold willingly back into a sitting position. There is a brief moment where I wonder if maybe there is a different reason for the gentleness of it all. Maybe he's not being nice. Maybe he's just getting weaker. Sicker. Worse. Sam nods to himself as if he agrees with my silent thoughts, though there is no way he would ever admit to his swiftly deteriorating state, even as he continues to cough up blood and spit it into motel tissues when he thinks I'm not looking or listening. Problem is, I always am. Sam moves to the plastic bag and takes out a plastic container. There is too much plastic in this room.

Inside the container is a ham sandwich: big and round and overflowing with condiments and toppings. Only the ones I'll eat. No tomatoes. No lettuce. Extra cheese.

Next stage then. We'll call this one 'practical mode,' I think.

He is like a seasoned nurse administering pain meds; meticulous, all business. He pops the lid off of the container holding the sandwich and pushes it closer to me, frowning when he sees that my beer still hasn't been touched since he left. Funny. Usually he's ecstatic when I'm not drinking.

"Eat," he says again, and finally those eyebrows float back up to his forehead, the picture of expectancy and a touch of patronization. I suppose, seeing as I'm the one who isn't talking, I kind of deserve to be treated like an unruly toddler. The sandwich actually looks good. Sam must've stopped at the food mart a few miles down the road and grabbed something from the deli. Still, I make no move to touch it. After all, apparently I can't open my mouth. Instead, I stare up at my brother. My brother, who didn't think to get a meal for himself because he hasn't even approached the beginnings of an appetite in at least a week. I wonder when I'll start to really see the weight fall off of him. I think it will be soon, seeing as I know every telling twitch of his lip and can predict almost every faltered step. Those eyebrows of his tilt, sad and pitying- an expression I hate when directed at anyone but the witnesses we interview. There, it works. Here, it just makes me less hungry than before. If he's not eating, I'm not eating.

"You get like this sometimes."

Sam sits down across from me, hands folded in front of him like a villain in a movie who is about to start twiddling his thumbs. But Sam is no villain, and his fingers stay still, weaved together on the table where he sits, directly across from me. They look thinner already, but I know it must be my imagination. My eyes ask the question my mouth cannot, and Sam smiles the same as before- sad and genuine.

"You know, when bad things happen? You just...stop talking for a while. It's a defense mechanism, something to protect you from all the crap that gets thrown our way when you finally get tired of taking it. I asked Dad about it once, when we were young. He said it happened after Mom. You wouldn't talk unless you had to tell Dad that I needed something or if you had to whisper to me to calm me down on nights I couldn't sleep. Dad never found out what you were saying to me. I bet he wishes he had asked."

If I couldn't talk before, now I definitely can't. I don't understand the stage we're on or the deep set of Sam's eyebrows or the way he's looking at me. It's not really pity, not like I thought. It's not even sadness, really. He waits a moment before he talks again, just in case I've decided to.

I try. I open my mouth and nothing comes out. There is too much nothing in this room, too. It goes nicely with the plastic.

* * *

"It's okay, you know." Sam sounds old. He sounds ancient. He sounds like a man with a burden on his back and a hole in his heart. And I know all of the things that put both of them there- the weight and the wound. I have killed most, but there are some things you can't snuff out, no matter how hard you try.

"It's okay if you need more than a minute," he continues, separating those enormous hands of his. He sets them palm-down on the table, fingers slightly spread apart and stretched out in front of him. Reaching for me without reaching.

"You don't always have to hold all of this in, though."

Sometimes I hear him talk to witnesses and sometimes I hear him talk to me and I think he should've been a therapist instead of a lawyer. Then I remember he can't be either anymore. That thought pulls at something, something painful that is buried between my lungs. Sam is still talking, but he is not oblivious to the sudden pickup in my breathing. It's just one battered inhale-exhale, but Sam hears it. Sam keeps talking.

"It doesn't mean you're not strong, it just means you need help. We all need help sometimes, Dean. So you can do this if you want to. You can stop talking for a while and take all the time you need to push past it like you normally do. Or if you want, you can talk about it, too. You can tell me. I promise you, I'll be here. I'll listen."

Yep. Definitely a therapist. The kid could've done a ton of damage control in a lucky high school somewhere in nowhere USA, I swear.

I open my mouth, but all that emerges is a small cough.

Sam coughs too, but his is a more vicious sound, a swollen harshness from deep inside his chest.

Still, he smiles, because that tiny cough of mine is the closest I've come to speech in a while. Truth be told, we're both encouraged by it. Sam's eyebrows do that little twitch they do when he knows he's finally onto something, when he's uncovered the latest piece to the puzzle that is the case that is the monster that is our lives.

"I...can't."

I say the words, finally, but they don't sound like my own. They are strangled and small; a mouse caught in a trap with the cheese still untouched. I swallow hard and try to push past all the stickiness in my throat, but it all just comes out like a half-drowned swimmer still struggling for oxygen. I wonder if it's possible to catch what Sammy has, even if I'm not the one doing the Hell trials. I'll take it. I'll take it all in a second if it means he gets better. I can't say any of that out loud of course, so I don't.

"I don't know...how."

That's what I say instead, and it sounds uglier than I thought it would. There is a catch on the 'h' in 'how,' and I swallow past it so my sentence sounds half-finished and pathetic, kind of like this entire situation. We've done this before, done this so many times before. There is always someone we can't save. It's the gig. So I don't understand why this one is hitting me like it is, making it impossible to get up from this table and crack a joke, make Sammy laugh so he can stop worrying and we can get a good night's rest before we drive the seven hours back to the bunker tomorrow morning.

I see the girl again, the one I couldn't save, there in the forefront of my memories. I watch her fall, body already half-limp with an inevitable death. And suddenly I am tossed into the throes of another recent memory, into the swirling pool of guilt and blood and pain inside my head. There is a brief flash of Sam, lying in a hospital bed. There is a flash of Charlie's mom, lying in the bed across from him. I know this to be a dream, but I remember the very real fear that place held, the darkening pit of dread Charlie and I faced together in that cold, white room. And just outside, a group of vampire-super-soldiers lined the doorway, and I did not have enough bullets.

_I never seem to have enough bullets. _

"What?" Sam asks, his hands still sitting on the table between us, fingers curling in as he watches my every expression, as he tries to understand what's wrong with his brother now. I didn't mean to say the thing about the bullets aloud, so I'm glad Sam doesn't understand what I mean. I'd given him a brief summary of my tour inside Charlie's Djinn-induced nightmare after it happened, but I hadn't told him about the prone figure I'd seen in the hospital bed- the spitting image of my little brother, as silent and unmoving as I had been earlier today when that same brother demanded a response. Now, at least, I have begun to talk again. If you count this sad attempt at conversation, that is. I shift back in my chair, and I am glad to find that I am not made of stone after all.

"Come on, man. You gotta give me something here," Sam coaxes, bringing one of those hands up to rub against his forehead. He is tired. Always tired. And sicker than I have ever seen, a cold that can't be fixed until we figure out the final trial, the one that will slam the gates of Hell shut forever. I remember once when Dad was away, Sammy came down with the flu. He was eight, I was twelve, and it was the worst twenty-four hours of my life.

Not anymore.

There have been a lot of 'worsts' since then, but this one is different. This one is a slow burn, and it is taking everything from him. I can't remember the last time Sam missed a practice target. I can't remember the last time he collapsed on the floor of a hotel room with a 107 fever and the sound of God's word echoing in his ears. It had taken far too long to fill that tub with ice, far too long to pull the unconscious form of my enormous little brother into that freezing cold water, and longer still before he emerged from it, gasping for air and insisting that Metatron was just around the corner, hiding away in his book-filled coward's lair. Sam is falling apart, and he is taking me with him whether he wants to or not. Of course, he would never want to.

"It's okay, Dean," he says, pushing up from the table and kneeling in front of me.

Another memory.

Suddenly, I am back at a cemetery in Lawrence, Kansas and the world is coming to an end, until it isn't. Suddenly, my little brother is standing on the edge of damnation and he is telling me everything is okay. "I've got him," he says. And then he falls. He pulls me down with him.

Except here, in this motel room in a different city in a different state, he doesn't do any of those things. He just puts a calloused hand on my shoulder and waits for me to meet his eyes before he speaks, those stupid eyebrows pushing deep into his head as he reassures me.

"I can't lose you now, Dean. We're right there, and you gotta stick with me until the end, okay? You come talk when you're ready. Til then, we should both get some sleep." He pats me a few times on that same shoulder as I nod, my head seeming to sink lower each time until my chin is pressed against my chest. I push out another battered inhale-exhale and I keep nodding until Sam has gravitated all the way to his bed farthest from the door, always farthest from the door so that when the monsters come, I can protect him. So that when the monsters come, I'll be first line of defense or, if need be, the first to die. I was supposed to protect him from this too. It was supposed to be me.

* * *

Sam whispers now, a promise carried across this room with its thin walls and broken television set (no room change this time) as he lies down on his thin little mattress and flicks his lamplight off but leaves mine on. Without the second lamp, the remaining light throws long, ugly shadows across the room. I shouldn't be able to, but I swear I can feel them sliding along my face, jagged slivers of black cutting across my cheekbones and burrowing into the sockets of my eyes.

"It's almost over, Dean," is what he whispers to me in the half-dark. I suppose it is meant to reassure.

Instead, I see a white room with a white bed with the familiar beeping of more than one monitor. I see a tall, motionless form lying in that bed, an array of wires weaving in and out of pale skin and sunken bones. I see no choices or demon deals or dimpled smiles, just a long, ugly road that ends with a sudden drop and an unthankful mess of blood and grief. Sam is the blood and I am the grief and I cannot find a scenario that allows me to survive it this time.

Sam looks and he sees a light that shines through all of this filth. He told me so himself. Sam believes in happily ever after. Sleepy Sunday afternoons in some far-off future, lounging on the porch with a glass of iced tea and a mess of long hair leaning against his shoulder and smiling lips to match his own, but all I can see is the dark and disastrous end that always, always comes sooner than we imagined it would.

One final stage, and it's almost here, just like always. Just like Sammy said.

It's almost over, and I doubt either of us survives.

* * *

**Thanks for reading. Hope everyone is enjoying a nice, lazy Sunday full of reading and/or writing! I love hearing from you, so please leave your comments/thoughts! **


	7. Drenched

**Set after 10x14. Spoilers. Dean's POV. **

* * *

Drenched

I am staring at the sun and it is not as bright as I have always imagined it to be. You're not supposed to do this. Everyone says you'll go blind if you stare directly into the sun, but here I am, breaking all the rules again, eyes somehow still intact. Usually when I break rules, I'm not so lucky.

Apparently I break a lot of rules, because I haven't had much luck. Ever.

Wait.

Does bad luck count as luck?

Things shift, and I am looking at my own reflection in the moldy bathroom mirror of the bar instead of the fluorescent light above my head. I study that reflection. There is something different about the alignment of my features, the title of my jaw, or maybe the shimmering tint of green in my (still intact) eyes. They look darker somehow, as if the sun..the bathroom bulb..has stolen some of their light. The face in the mirror shifts and so do I, looking back towards the door that leads to the bar that has another door that leads outside. Suddenly, that's where I need to be. And then I am, staring up at the stars because it is the closest thing I can find to the sun right now.

I am blinking away the world and things tilt again.

Sam is there, staring at me from across the parking lot. He leans against the side of the Impala, his long arms folded across his chest, muscles straining against each other as if he is waiting to pounce. The moment he catches sight of me, he starts walking, fists now clenched at his sides, mouth set in a thin line. I wait for him to reach me, running my left hand not-so-absently along the raised Mark on my right forearm. It burns slightly, a tingling that hasn't truly gone away since I killed the King of Murder himself. Cain's face blurs in and out of focus in front of me, his words echoing in the space between my brother and me.

_My story began when I killed my brother, and that's where your story inevitably will end. _

"What are you doing?" Sam asks. He has closed the distance and is standing a few feet away now, and I am staring at the stars again. His face, like the sun, like the bathroom light bulb, is darker than I remember.

"I was just...just had to get away." The words slide off my tongue as if they are exactly what I should be saying. They feel right, but based on Sam's expression, that instinct is wrong. His lips tighten and he shakes his head. I used to read him so well.

"Couldn't leave a note?" he growls, the worry barely seeping in past the anger. I remember when it was the other way around. Worry always used to come first for us. For each other.

"Didn't think you'd wake," I shrug, suddenly hoping he'll start throwing punches. My bones are itching for a fight, every nerve standing at attention. If I had to find a way to describe the Mark of Cain, that would be it. Every particle is _alive_ inside of me, the static of all those colliding atoms constantly pushing against my bones, my skin, the inside of my skull.

_Kill. Kill. Kill, _they scream. They do not sleep, and they have become more and more difficult to ignore.

I do not sleep much anymore either.

Sam huffs and throws his shoulders back. He is shaking his head again.

"What's wrong with you?" he whispers. He sounds sad. Resigned. It only infuriates me further. I thought he was supposed to be the one who wasn't giving up.

"Take your pick," I snarl, watching with satisfaction as his eyes narrow. I know which buttons to push. I know how to make this conversation go in the direction I want it to. Every fiber is singing. I push again.

"Why don't you just go home, huh Sammy?" I chide, voice low and calculated and just the right balance between dead and alive. "You really think chasing after me does anybody any good? Ever? How many times do I have to tell you: I don't need a goddamn babysitter."

I press on before Sam can answer, and I can tell he is on the verge of exploding now, that vein at the side of his temple hammering out the most unstable of beats.

"Leave. Now." I am trying to hide the rapid pounding of my heart as I turn away from him, the pounding that matches that vein of his, but even now when I am no longer looking at him, I am coiled. Waiting.

One more push.

"Stop trying, Sam. Just stop. It's been a lost cause from day one. Time to face it."

"How...how can you say that?" Sam's voice should be painful to my ears. It crackles and folds over itself like a piece of paper left to burn in the furnace of our lives. But instead of regretting the words I've said, there is a pit of bubbling glee in the bottom of my stomach. It only magnifies when Sam can no longer stand the fact that my back is to him, when he grabs my shoulder and spins me around to face him.

His wrist snaps quick and easy beneath my hold, his shriek of agony resounding in my ears as he stumbles back, cradling the injured limb.

"D...Dean, don't do this," he pleads, steps faltering a bit as his heel hits the side of the curb. My head tilts, watching him from a different angle, and I follow after him, the Mark aching in anticipation. He doesn't even have his hands up for the first few blows, maybe too shocked or possibly still convinced I will stop, that I will come to my senses.

But my senses are completely overwhelmed, and I do not stop, not even when his knees buckle under the force of the fourth or maybe the sixth punch.

Somewhere down deep, past the back of my mind and buried at the edges of my consciousness, there is a voice screaming at me. _Stop,_ it bellows. _Stop. You're hurting him. This is wrong! This is Sammy! STOP! _

My hands are curled around the collar of his shirt, my knuckles cracking apart. I watch the blood trickle from them and from Sam's nose, his lip, his gushing cheek. I run a vibrating hand across my forehead, pushing the irritation voice back to where it came from. Beneath me, Sam shivers and coughs, spitting up more blood.

_It needs more blood. _

I don't remember reaching for the knife in my boot, but suddenly it is in my hand, hovering just above my brother's collarbone. I hear the gasp he attempts to stifle, the low moan he tries to hide beneath rapid, panicked breathing. I revel in the sound of his fear, the raw smell of it, as I glide the knife further up to his neck, nicking the skin so that a thin line of red opens up where the blade passes over.

"Dean. Dean, please," he gasps, wrapping his fingers around my hand, the one still holding onto his shirt. I cannot feel him. I only feel the reassuring warmth of the Mark's influence as it spreads over my arm, across my entire body and all the way through to my fingertips. The choice is easy. The choice is not a choice at all.

I bring the blade up. I bring it down. There is one scream, one horrified whimper that tears from his throat, and then he is trembling again, keening as he loses his blood, his air; as the knife in his chest does its job. I pull it out, eliciting one final breath from him before he is still beneath my hands.

_Noooooooo! _

The voice is back. The screaming is louder this time, impossible to ignore.

_No no no no no no no. Sammy. _

My breath hitches, lungs collapsing inside my ribcage once, twice, a third time.

I check frantically for the knife that I am sure must now be buried within my own chest based on the pain there, pawing clumsily for it, but all I feel is the hollowed out beating of my heart and the ferocious fire of the scar that pounds madly against my arm, proclaiming its victory.

"Oh god."

This voice is not inside my head anymore. It belongs to me, but I barely recognize the anguished moan, the disbelieving catch in between stuttered gasps that don't count as real breathing.

Real?

This can't be.

I gag. I cannot look down at the body, the bloodied face I know lies beneath me so still. My oxygen is almost gone, leaving room for one more agonized scream that rips a hole through everything that I am, everything that I have ever been.

"_SAMMY!"_

I wake up drenched in my own sweat; a thousand horses stampeding across my chest, pushing me deeper into the mattress, even as I writhe against the twisted sheets that hold me captive. It is not the first time I have dreamed this nightmare, but my reaction is the same as all the times before.

I gasp for air. I squeeze my eyes shut until I can see the outline of a thousand burning stars, their forms twisting and writhing as they plummet toward the back of my head, searing themselves deep into my ruined brain, making them my ugliest memory. I see my brother's face. I listen to him scream. I gasp out another strangled spiral of air and memories.

I open my eyes to look, and there is no sun.

I open my eyes, and there is no light at all.

* * *

**I think I intended this to be a kind of tag to Dean's nightmare in 10x17, but it's been so dang long since I actually wrote it out that I can't remember anymore. Anyway, thank you so much for reading. Reviews are gold. So are you. **


	8. Paintbrush Wings

**Haven't posted in "Mighty Winchesters" for quite a bit, and this one seems like it fits here. **

**Slight spoilers for season 7, particularly 7x03. **

**Welcome to this story, where everything is made up and the points don't matter. You'll see what I mean.**

* * *

Paintbrush Wings

Sunrise came on the wings of a drunken fly, light blossoming up at the corners of the world and tilting into the window at a strange half-angle, as if the fly had decided that after a night of too much whiskey, it would do well to take a sideways plunge into the thin double-pane.

Dean watched the sloppy ascent from his chair beside the window, admiring the elegant swoop of barely-there clouds that hung in the brightening sky like wispy, half-crescent moons that hadn't yet realized their glow was no longer required.

His own tumbler of whiskey, probably larger than that of the fly's, sat beside him on the table of the small motel room, full and glistening with sweat. It had gone untouched all night, seemingly too much effort to be picked up and brought to lips. And while that task had seemed daunting to Dean, sleep had also been an impossibility, of that he had been sure. Exhaustion was evident in the lines of his unsmiling face, a criss-cross of fissures pulling at the corners of his mouth and burrowing deep into the space above his nose and between his eyes in what seemed a now permanent indentation, but Dean was still sure he wouldn't've caught a blink of blessed unconsciousness.

Stretching with the sun, Dean lifted stiff arms and crackling fingers above his head, pulling first on his right wrist, then his left, leaning just enough to stretch unmoved muscles but not enough to disturb the monstrosity that enveloped his right leg. The pristine white cast sat on the chair opposite him and seemed to gleam up at him as the fly finally gained some stability, its wings shifting just enough to allow sunlight to stream in straight and proper. Behind him, Dean hear his brother shift in the bed farthest from the door, Sam's long arms no doubt moving to shield exposed eyes from the light. He always seemed to sleep facing Dean, consciously or not, and because of their routine motel sleeping arrangement, this usually meant that Sam rose, sometimes regretfully, as the sun did. But this was just a small, shifting adjustment and Dean knew he still had a little time before his brother awakened fully, no doubt ready to paste on another of his fake "I'm okay, can barely hear Satan's voice shrieking in my ears, honest to god, I feel just great!" grins, directed right at Dean.

But Dean had been up all night, so Dean knew exactly how often the Devils' invisible laughter had invaded his little brother's eardrums. While last night had been better than most, the fitful moans and agonized twisting of sheets had not been fully escaped. If Dean could've, he would've woken Sam several times during the night. Lack of mobility thanks to the broken leg wasn't the only thing that stopped him. No matter how fitful, Sam needed his sleep.

"Why're you up?" The words were a bit dulled, as if Sam was speaking from beneath several layers of loose dirt, and they made Dean flinch in surprise. He'd been expecting a few more minutes of morning stillness before his own mask needed to be painted on.

"S'morning," he replied lamely, not yet turning to look at Sam, his gaze instead focused on a small black bug trapped between the two panes of the motel window. It wasn't that same drunken fly that had been in charge of this morning's sunrise because there were two red spots decorating the center of each wing. They looked to him like the stray droppings of a distracted artists' paintbrush, falling wasted and unnoticed onto a brightly stained floor. From his position at the table, all Dean had to do was pull the window open a bit and the bug could eventually wiggle its way to freedom.

Dean didn't move.

"Did you sleep at all?" Sam asked, a more pronounced rustle from the bed this time. Still without looking, Dean knew Sam was now sitting up with his legs flung over the side of the bed facing him, most likely running both hands over his face and through his hair, flattening the strays. Dean smiled softly and forgot to answer. The black bug wit the red dots had given up on its initial fruitless path and had now begun to crawl straight up the middle of the glass. This new course meant that it would eventually run right into the thick ridge between the upper and lower portions of the window and would once again have no place to go.

"Dean, you gotta get some sleep, man. I know it's probably hard with the cast on, but you gotta at least try before you run yourself ragged."

"Doesn't really seem to be an issue seeing as I'm not running _anywhere_ anytime soon."

He hadn't meant to spit the words with quite so much venom, but even the bug had paused in its journey for a moment, its delicate legs pressed insistently against the glass as if appalled at Dean's grating tone and expecting an apology. Sam did not expect the same. He just sighed, low and sad and weary (and whose fault was that now? Whose fault was it always? Starts with D and you have three guesses and holy shit, it's not even 9am). Dean heard another hand pushing through shaggy hair, this time a byproduct of exasperation, not just morning routine.

"Sorry." Dean gave into the bug's faceless judgement a moment later, directing his words to the glass. The bug began to climb towards a dead end once more.

"I know," Sam said. "I know you're frustrated."

Dean smiled again, a small and unentertained quirk of his lips, and shook his head. Through the window he could see that a few of the wispier clouds from earlier in the morning had disappeared altogether, their fragments so scattered as to appear to blend with the blueness. It was going to be a beautiful day.

"Doesn't matter. I don't have anything to complain about. Nothing in comparison."

Another shifting of sheets. This one more pronounced than the last, and how funny that Dean could see without looking, could know that Sam was now gaping at him, perhaps a touch of anger in his eyes. How funny that Dean could know all of this, and still not know why. He turned. He was wrong. It was more bewilderment than anger.

"It's not a competition," Sam said, eyes finally locked on Dean's, earnest and huge and reminding Dean of why he should've just kept watching the damn bug. "There's no quota of suffering to fulfill here, no…scale to measure the validity."

Dean rolled his eyes, licked dry lips and regarded the whiskey with interest for the first time since he'd poured it the night before. But it was too late now. Sun was out and Sammy was awake and watching and waiting for a response. Dean gave him one, typical _Dean style: _

"Can you cool it with the big boy words, man? I'm too tired for that crap."

Dean turned back to the window, blinking against the now-sober sun. The bug between the windows had changed direction again. Another dead end.

"I know," Sam said again. It sounded sad and full of layers; a weight he'd yet to share. Dean rolled his shoulders away from the sound of it and regretted mentioning what the bruises under his eyes already gave away.

He tilted his head a little to the left and wondered at motel windows, the style of them. Why not the big, French ones that opened up wide? No double layers, just one hand on each little handle and pull it and _boom_. Open air. Nothing would get trapped that way, nothing lost between the gaps and left to die. He envisioned a swarm of bugs marching diligently across the window ledge carrying their tiny protest signs: "Let us fly!" "Double pane is a double PAIN!" He saw himself at the front of the line, tiny and self-righteous; the first to be smushed beneath a sneaker. Behind him, Sam was working up to something. Dean could hear it in the way he breathed.

"I know you're tired and I know you're not sleeping," Sam said after more of that particular brand of breathing. "And I also know it's not the cast. It's because of me. But Dean, you need to take care of yourself. Honestly, I'm fi…"

"Stop." Dean had to say something, had to butt in before Sam kept talking. He could feel that old, familiar anger settling into the suddenly rolling pit of his stomach, biting and stinging and eating through the lining of it and moving up into his chest. "Goddammit don't you dare say you're 'fine.' This isn't something you just shake off, Sam. It's deeper than that, it's…"

"It's under control." Said calmly, softly.

"_For how long_?" Dean exploded. His hands jerked up in a motion that might've seemed over dramatic to anyone but Sam, who winced, biting his lip as Dean's sudden movement settled as fast as it had come on, his right hand coming to rest beside the whiskey glass, left hand dropping over the leg of the cast almost delicately, as if attempting to shelter the wilting petals of a flower from a torrential storm.

Sam's answer was a bad one, and Dean tried not to let the words sink in too far, but they joined the rest of the traitorous acid floating inside the walls of his chest.

"For as long as I can hold it all together," Sam replied. "I know that's not fair and that's not the answer you want, but it's everything I have. That's what I can give. Can you accept that? Because if you can't I don't know how much longer we can keep doing this."

Dean swallowed. Digested. Felt the sting of it and thought he might lose his dinner from the night before which had actually been a pretty decent burger with extra onions the way he liked it. The aftertaste now felt a little less like comfort food and a little more like strategy on his brother's part, a tool used to soften him up a bit, make him more pliant for an argument like this. God knew how Sam would've predicted this conversation, but Dean had begun to believe long ago that the kid was capable of anything.

Plus, Dean had been sulking.

He hadn't meant to, but the whole 'not moving, not hunting for the next however many weeks' thing had been torture. And with nothing else to occupy his time, Dean had taken to doing what he did best: worrying about his little brother, the one with the Devil whispering secrets in his ear. And so Sam had no doubt been arming himself for this fight the moment he'd begun to notice Dean's lack of sleep or that wrinkled indent on his forehead or the way he held his fork or whatever the hell kind of other tiny details the damn kid picked up on. And this was a fight, right? Dean thought it was. He had to make sure.

"What does that mean, exactly?" he asked.

Sam sighed. "It means I refuse to be a liability to you. So if you feel like you can't trust me anymore, then I'll go," he said. Sam was standing now, Dean could see out of the corner of his eye. He looked to be almost swaying next to the bed as he spoke, each word carried off on one of his currents. Seemed he was building toward something deadly and terrible. A tsunami, maybe.

"Because if you're distracted by the possibility of me screwing up due to the fact that Satan's my backseat driver, that means you're in danger," he continued. "And I won't do that. I won't put you at risk."

Dean snorted. "You giving me an ultimatum?"

"I'm giving you a chance to be honest. To let down the stupid _walls_ you always build and just _tell_ me where we stand so we don't have to keep tiptoeing around each other. So that if it's what's best, we subtract me from the equation."

"This ain't a math problem." Now. _Now_ Dean was pissed, the short sentence bubbling up out of his throat.

"I know that, Dean. I live with this crap every single day, and I get that it's...complicated." Another snort from Dean. "That's not the point. The point is, you have to tell me what makes sense to you."

Dean blinked once, slow, before twisting around as far as his broken leg would allow so that he could watch Sam, who was still swaying slightly with arms crossed over his chest. "Why does this sound like it all comes down to me?" Dean asked. "Always my decision, what I can deal with. What about you? What about what you see every time you close your eyes? Hell, every time you turn a corner? Even if I say I think you're in control of it, that I trust you, how are you supposed to keep going like this? How am I supposed to...to watch?"

"We'll figure something out…"

Dean huffed and twisted a little more, pushing his glass of whiskey to the far side of the table, almost out of reach. "First of all, that's my line. And we will. I know we will, but in the meantime, how are you gonna stay on your feet? What's the solution for…" Dean paused and gestured to Sam, still swaying back and forth, arms like tree branches. "...all that?"

"I'm just standing here."

"Oh please, you're a friggin' house of cards right now. And not the badass, manipulative, Kevin-Spacey kind."

"Dean, that doesn't even make sense." Sam's lip quirked as he spoke, as if not sure whether or not Dean was trying to steer the conversation into less serious territory. He would've gladly taken that route at this point, but Dean's answer held an edge.

"Sam, I don't care. I just...can't keep having this fight." And he knew now, knew for sure that that's what this was. A fight.

"So then what are you saying?" Sam asked. "That I should go?"

"No!" Dean all but shouted the word. Panicked.

Sam swallowed, watching the way his brother's jaw worked in aggravation, the way the fingers of Dean's right hand curled into a fist. He chose his words carefully.

"I need this to be different then, Dean. No treating me like I can't be on my own. No scaring yourself out of sleep. And no guilty conscience for a bunch of shit you can't change that isn't even your fault in the first place. Can you do all that?"

Dean didn't say anything, focused too intently on his fist. He unfurled each finger carefully. Then he turned again to stare at the doomed insect still crawling its way up the glass of the window. Finally, he nodded.

"Dean, I'm serious."

"I know. I am too. You gotta cut me a little slack t though, man," Dean insisted. "You can't go running off the second I pull out a thermometer or whatever."

"What?" Sam asked, somewhat lost now. Dean rolled his eyes and clarified.

"I just mean I'm entitled. This isn't exactly a normal situation we've got here. It's...scary." He huffed at the admission. "And you're my brother. So I'm allowed to be an ass about it sometimes. I'm allowed to be worried and to take some steps to make _sure_ you're good. Especially since it's my ass you're supposed to be covering."

"Wow."

"Wow, what?"

Sam smiled and uncrossed his arms. "As in 'wow, this might be our first mature, adult compromise. Ever. Because you're right. I know I can't expect you not to do or say anything about...all this," Sam continued, gesturing to himself in a mockery of Dean's earlier words. "So I guess that's it then, huh?"

"What's '_it'_? We haven't even settled anything," Dean growled.

"I disagree."

"Yeah well, you're an idiot."

"And you're a gimp."

"Ouch. Low blow, Sam."

Sam smiled. "Bobby wants us back at his place. I'm gonna start packing, okay? You just sit there. You know, being all gimpy."

Dean sighed, recognizing the end of a fight when he heard it. He'd heard it a lot. He leaned back in his chair, intertwining his fingers behind his head_._ "It _is_ nice to have you pick up some of the slack for once. I'm so tired of doing all the work."

Sam snorted. "Okay. Sure. _All_ the work."

Dean stuck his tongue out and didn't bother to answer, instead watching as Sam began to clean the motel room, organizing his own clothes and tossing a few stray socks into Dean's duffle. And Dean thought that maybe Sam had been right. Maybe that conversation _had_ changed something. It was small, insignificant to most, but Dean could feel it in the particles of the room and he could see it in the way the corners of Sam's mouth were turned up slightly as he cleaned.

Later, when the Impala was packed and Dean stood in the motel room doorway on one foot and two crutches, he paused.

"Dean, you okay?"

"I'll meet you at the car. Forgot something," he said.

Sam gave him a look, but shrugged. He readjusted the duffle on his shoulder and began walking to the car, stride long and steady and not swaying.

Behind him, Dean limped slowly over to the table where he'd sat this morning. Leaning against it, crutches tucked beneath one arm, he pushed the bottom pane of the glass window up by a few inches. Then he shut the door after him and joined his brother.

Behind him, the little black bug with the painted wings changed direction once again, this time heading for open air.

* * *

**In some ways this story was maybe a little pointless but I'd like to think it's maybe not. Anyway, share your thoughts if you have time and thanks for reading! **


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